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News and observation reports, June 2009:

Water spouts detected on Encelade:

The Cassini probe detected water spouts on the surface of Encelade, one of Saturn's moons.

As it was suggested earlier that Encelade may have a subsurface liquid water ocean, the water spouts became a subject of controversy as to whether they are evidence or not of such an ocean.

Nick Schneider and his team at the University of Boulder, Colorado used data from the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaï, to check for sodium signature in the plumes and found none; which they say rules out a near-surface ocean.

Frank Postberg at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, suggests that it may be an ocean much deeper below the surface. Using cosmic dust data from the Cassini probe, his team found that a small percentage of ice grains were indeed sodium rich or salty, and this only explains if the supposed ocean was deep enough to be in contact with the rocky core of Encelade, i.e. below some 50 kilometers of the icy crust. He said the absence of sodium indicated by Nick Schneider team is due to the insufficient sensitivity of the Earth-based Keck telescope.

Susan Kieffer, geologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said that she has another explanation. She says sodium is not proof of a liquid ocean because it could also be locked up in an icy clathrate, i.e. a mix of gassy molecules locked up in the lattice of another molecule. The gasses would be released when tectonic plates in the crust move and collide, and the gasses could then carry up ice particles with them to form the icy plumes, and of course these ice particles could carry up salt as well.

She added that other gasses were found in the plumes, such as methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, and these other gasses are indicative of chlarates, not water ocean.

Uruguayan Air Force declassifies UFO files:

The Uruguayan Air Force (FAU) high command decided to declassify its UFO sightings file and allowed people of the national newspaper El Pais to view it.

Colonel Ariel Sanchez, an Air Force officer with 33 years of active service, currently heads the UFO commission operates in small office in downtown Montevideo and managed a computer database and print archives of hundreds of files in green binders under the heading "Confidential", containing eyewitness accounts, photographs, sketches, drawings, documents and evaluations made by officials.

The files contains about 100 cases per year with 2100 reports the UFO commission investigated, many being explained as hoxes or mistakes, forty cases remaining "unexplained." Cases range from nonimpressive "light in the sky" to UFO landings and people claiming to have been kidnapped by extraterrestrial entities.

The military commission's task is to compile a record of cases and draft guidelines or conclusions regarding their veracity and cause and Press says they obtained interesting results, for example "The commission managed to determine modifications to the chemical composition of the soil where landings were reported. It could be a phenomenon that occurs in the lower sectors of the atmosphere, the landing of aircraft from a foreign air force, up to the extraterrestrial hypothesis."

Col. Sanchez is quoted saying UFOs "could be monitoring probes from outer space, much in the same way that we send probes to explore distant worlds. The UFO phenomenon exists and I must stress that the Air Force does not dismiss an extraterrestrial hypothesis based on our scientific analysis."

Colorado University researchers announce first definitive evidence of an ancient lake on Mars:

A team of researchers lead by Gaetano Di Achille at the University of Colorado say they discovered the first definitive evidence of shorelines on Mars, indicative of a deep ancient lake. The lake is estimated to have existed more than 3 billion years old and appears to have covered as much as 80 square miles and was up to 1,500 feet deep.

The shoreline evidence was found along a broad delta and includes a series of alternating ridges and troughs thought to be surviving remnants of beach deposits.

The ancient lake bed is located within the much larger Shalbatana valley, where water carved a 30-mile-long canyon, depositing sediment that formed a large clearly visible delta. The researchers said that the lake formed after the warm wet period "Noachan epoch" from about 4.1 billion to 3.7 billion years, when it was thought all water must have dissipated. The lakebed is believed to have formed during the Hesperian epoch and thus postdates the end of the Noachan epoch by 300 million years. It probably evaporated and froze suddenly because no additional, lower shorelines, is seen.

Images used for the study were taken by the high-powered camera HiRISE on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which can resolve surface features of one meter in size.

A paper on the matter is in press in Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

See: www.colorado.edu/news/r/7e9c22ec0cd6dabc007bb14ed2e29f16.html

Papers: "Sodium salts in E-ring ice grains from an ocean below the surface of Enceladus", 2009, F. Postberg, S. Kempf, J. Schmidt, N. Brilliantov, A. Beinsen, B. Abe, U. Buck & R. Srama, Nature 459, 1098-1101, June 25, 2009.
"No sodium in the vapour plumes of Enceladus", Nicholas M. Schneider, 2009, Matthew H. Burger, Emily L. Schaller, Michael E. Brown, Robert E. Johnson, Jeffrey S. Kargel, Michele K. Dougherty & Nicholas A. Achilleos, Nature 459, 1102-1104, June 25, 2009.

Flotilla of UFO or just flotilla of ballons filmed in Italy:

Someone in Naples wrote to a UFO group called "EvidenzAliena" that on June 13, 2009 at 19:00 he filmed a "flotilla of UFOs". His video, published on Youtube, seems to show what looks just like a flottila of balloons, but this simple and classical commonplace explanation seems to have been missed by the witness, by "EvidenzAliena" and "La voce di Megaride" who published the report.

Source and video at: http://blog.libero.it/lavocedimegaride/7299120.html

Flotilla of almost identified lanterns seen in Paris, France:

Headlining "strange lights in the Parisian sky", the ufofu.org blog reports that around midnight, on June 13 2009, people saw "ten" lights rising very slowly in the Parisian sky.

One of the witnesses comments that "... It was very strange... It was like stars or lanterns which went up gently... The lights were yellow/orange and did not change intensity... Really like lanterns lampions... Or a Christmas garland... "

And: "They were not all on the same level and were spaced in a nonregular manner. The sky was rather low there that evening and some of the lights crossed the clouds..." and "I do not know what that could be... We told ourselves that they were lanterns, maybe attached to balloons?"

They wonder where aliens will be landing, Kent, U-K.:

On 11 June 2009 the web portal "This is local London" wonders "Could aliens be landing in a field near you this summer?"

The article claims that crop circles, "a freak of nature or the work of aliens", are "making a comeback", that "The aliens have been quiet lately" and that their reporter "looks at where the Martians could land next."

It says that it has been almost two years since the last crop circle was spotted in Kent, but that "crop circle enthusiast Graham Tucker, who contributes to the Medway Crop Circle website, says the circles could reappear in the area this summer. The season so far has been quite promising, which started with circles appearing in April, mostly in Wiltshire. It’s quite likely we will see some this year, however it’s a very unpredictable phenomena."

One Andrew Fowlds, who runs the Medway Crop Circle website, says crop circles "could be the work of aliens" and "it's a fascinating mystery, there are still a lot of unanswered questions."

See: www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/4430440.NORTH_KENT__Could_aliens_be_landing_in_a_field_near_you_this_summer_

Chinese lanterns, U-K.:

Metro talks of "Clusters of more than 100" oragneg lights "have been spotted across Britain and even Holland" and prompted a "UFO fever" of "UFO frenzy", but that these "UFOs" turn out to be something rather more mundane: Chinese lanterns.

The Daily Express says that "Mysterious orange lights in the skies have baffled eyewitnesses and experts alike."

Apparently, about 50 of glowing objects were seen in Liverpool and Lincolnshire on Sunday night and in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, last Wednesday. An engineer said: “There were 26 of them at first, dodging and darting in between each other as if they were playing a game. After that, seven more arrived from the right hand side and weaved through the crowd of lights like strange kinds of aircraft. After five minutes of moving around, the flickering yellow objects hung in the air for a second then shot off into the sky and disappeared. I've no idea what they were. I'm not usually a believer but what I saw was really weird."

Spokesperson Ruth Veron for nearby RAF Cranwell, said she has no idea what the lights could be and that the base had no aircraft flying that night.

Another newspaper claimed it could just be decoys used in a naval exercise and yet another newspaper says this is "unconfirmed by the Ministry of Defence".

Sources: www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?UFO_frenzy_as_15_mystery_orbs_seen_over_UK&in_article_id=678791&in_page_id=34
www.express.co.uk/posts/view/105284/UFO-watchers-fail-to-throw-any-light-on-night-visitors
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5435262/UFOs-above-Merseyside-linked-to-HMS-Daring-military-exercise.html
www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=422400
www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/ufos/2462720/Twenty-UFOs-fly-in-formation.html

And here's the best: the Macedonian news agency managed to claim that "A British Navy warship may have come within seconds of opening fire on UFOs above Merseyside, possibly narrowly avoiding the precipitation of an interstellar war and the extirpation of humanity by testy aliens."

Source: macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/7029/56

(The same news agency, who also offers advertizing for "Scientology", recently claimed that "France will reveal ET presence", their whimsical interpretation of the release of UFO files by GEIPAN.)

Hayling Island UFOs were 25 Chinese lanterns, U-K.:

A local newspaper received phone calls by people stunned to see about 25 floating orange lights in the sky orbs above Hayling Island, and even the coastguard was alerted.

But when someone published the video on Youtube it became clear that the lights were just Chinese lanterns. These were confirmed when it was learn that friends calling themselves "Spacey" and "Furbag", launched them from Wittering Road, on the eastern part of the island, starting at around 10pm., and more from the North of the Island.

Spacey, who did not want to reveal his true identity, said, 'We had a crowd of people involved by the time we'd finished, including a fisherman, a Polish man and a young mum with her two kids helping to launch them too. It was nothing more than a bit of a wheeze, and a fun way to start the summer."

Source www.portsmouth.co.uk/newshome/Hayling-Island-39UFO39-were-25.5324335.jp

BLURFO in south Shrosphire, U-K.:

A newspaper reports that one Col Foster on holiday captured "UFOs on camera across Shropshire." It is said he often visits the area because "the county is a great place to spot unidentified objects in the sky" and that "Recently, he has taken pictures of UFOs in the sky over Bridgnorth, Tenbury Wells and Clee Hill."

Apparently Col's favourite UFO pictures were taken in Cookley. The "video" is actually a series of still frames showing a darkish blob, likely just an insect flying fast in front of the lenses. Nothing was seen visually.

Source: www.shropshirestar.com/2009/06/02/sky-watcher-we-are-not-alone
The "video": www.shropshirestar.com/2009/06/02/ufo-sighted-over-cookley

More on BLURFOs here.

UFO spotted over Sutton Leach, U-K.:

Lee Caldwell, introduced as a "X-Files fan", said he spotted a "weird red light" flying low over the Leach Lane area in Sutton Leach, U-K.. He said: "I'm into space and physics and tried to dispute what I was seeing, but I couldn't. People might think it was a Chinese lantern, but it wasn't - it was moving far too fast and seemed to change shape. It definitely wasn't a plane either. It had this red glow and, although this sounds strange, looked like it had antlers. I'm still at a loss to explain what it was."

The quite poor report appeared on June 1, 2009, without more details and no specified date and hour for the sighting.

Source: www.sthelensreporter.co.uk/st-helens-news/UFO-spotted-over-Sutton-Leach.5317449.jp

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This page was last updated on September 30, 2009